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Topic: Another 2000AD read thread (Read 5131 times)

Prog 680. I love 2000 AD at the moment. After the long build up Necropolis is paying off so gradually, it sometimes seems like nothing is really happening week to week, but I can't stop wanting to read the next instalment - the tension and anticipation is constant. The artwork for Shadows initially seemed unpromising, but it keeps the story rollicking along and I'm looking forward to this every time now. The revamped Universal Soldier is a far more interesting story than the initial run too. Armoured Gideon offered something a bit different, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes when it comes back. Chronos Carnival had a great setup before a get-it-over-and-done-with incursion to another dimension, whether it has something more interesting to offer is so far uncertain - it seems like a setting that has more potential than has so far been used. Bix Barton was brief enough to amuse without becoming tiresome, Indigo Prime feels strange without being laboured or mystifying, and on the whole it feels like the progs have regained a lightness of touch that became somewhat lost in the gnarly, scrawly artwork of the last couple of years. I've heard that things take a nosedive after Prog 700, but for now this feels like its own little golden age.

Forgot to mention new Harlem Heroes - so far, I don't mind it, or it's lack of real connection with the original strip. The complete absence of sport was a surprise, but on reflection fits the trend of Harlem Heroes>Inferno>Mean Arena>Mean Team of moving away from games with complicated rules and accessories to straight personal combat and a "team" breaking out of sport into the wider world. Mean Team was awful, because it had no idea what to do once the sport bit was over. Hopefully not having the sport bit at all will mean that new Harlem Heroes has the answer.

I look forward to Rogue Trooper going super-adult, so far the relaunch feels like it's been treading water from the start, so something needs to happen with it!

Prog 694 - so new Harlem Heroes isn't such a great leap forward, and my goodness some of the dialogue scripting has not chuckle come off well in the last couple of installments as I'm sure you stoned out readers are fully aware. But there's still something there, it's just a shame the over the top chatter drowns out a bit of the suspense in the strip - which the artwork could easily carry. However it's head and shoulders above Dry Run, which takes a huge amount of character background for granted whilst not trusting the artwork to show anything without a caption box describing whatever scene transition or bit of action we should be looking at - and still in places even with these clues the images are indecipherable. It's hard to think of the last time something fell this flat without immediately summoning Angel or Rick Random.

Necropolis is still advancing, pushing it's characters slowly together, and the anticipation is still there but it feels like it's getting dangerously close to the end without becoming really explosive - so I hope there's still plenty to come. Slaine is also somewhat stately in pace, but this totally befits the grandiose storyline. I like it a lot more than I thought I would. And I still enjoyed the recent run of Medivac 318! Hope it returns.

So...Strontium Dog. Why? Why bring back the story in a new format for 5 parts and a recap just to kill off Johnny Alpha? It feels like story for The Final Solution didn't have a proper resolved ending, they just ended it as quickly as they could. And Johnny dying over 3(?) progs after such a long gap from the rest of the story felt like the character was short changed - what was it for? This could have been done so much better, instead, it feels like a complete waste. I'm mystified.

I too remember being let down by the last gasp of The Final Solution when it ran in the weekly; it does feel racther rushed and tacked on. But, like so many more modern thrills, it reads a lot better in the collected edition. Was this the time when the Prog felt less like a weekly comic and more like a first run for collected editions? As ever, beating American comics to the punch by several years!

The collected edition point is an interesting one - definitely true for Slaine and Anderson with Shamballa, but not so much for Chronos Carnival or Harlem Heroes which seem pretty much like bread and butter strips that could have come at any time over the life of the comic. What Slaine and Shamballa have in common, along with the Rogue Trooper War Machine, is that they're given a full title page before each installment - definitely a distinction being drawn.

I've just finished Prog 709. I'm enjoying the fall out from Necropolis which is nicely reminiscent of the months of stories dealing with the aftermath of the Apocalypse War. Hewligans Haircut was ok, interesting to contrast this with Time Flies - with Hewligan it was up front about being 8 weeks, so if it jarred a bit you knew it would be over soon, with Time Flies I feel like I've had enough and now just waiting for it to finish, which means small disappointment each prog when it doesn't.

Junker seems fairly run of the mill so far, but the artwork is good. Silo feels very different, very adult, and I really appreciate the contrast between it and everything else at the moment. Shamballa running for collected edition is supported by the sometime arbitrary seeming page lengths - things are happening each week, but like Slaine you can feel the development stretching over a longer period. Nearly 1991!

Wow that's certainly an interesting set of stories which really shows the diversity of 2000ad at its best. The inclusion of both Time Flies and Hewligans Haircut also demonstrated how influencial Deadline was. Never really settled in the Prog but both these stories felt lkike 2000ad trying to do Deadline lite (should say I like both).

Prog 731. Quick thoughts - 1. Going full colour really made everything look very samey for a while. Was this a quick decision affecting strips that hadn't been necessarily planned in colour? Things just seem to be adjusting now, particularly happy with the lovely look of Mean Machine Travels With Muh Shrink

2. Junker was rubbish.

3. Don't know if it's down to a change in publishers but the tone of the Nerve Centre has really changed. It's a lot less fun. The extra page really isn't warranted, and the issue or two full of letters from the Gulf War was quite uncomfortable.

4. Brigand Doom felt like a flimsy take off of V for Vendetta, and stopped at the point it looked like it was going to move away from that.

5. I don't dislike Tao De Moto, and the idea of a Halo Jones for the 90s is a laudable one, but if they really believed it, wouldn't it be running more than 2 pages a time?

6. Mixed feelings on Robo Hunter's facelift and Terminator strip - which means it's probably better than I was expecting.

Prog 744. I liked Bix Barton better in black and white. Killing Time was brilliant - finally hitting the right (for me) balance between esoteric ideas and coherent plot, and absolutely beautiful throughout. I loved the Victorian style chapter headings at the top of each page too. Dead Meat looks fun so far, Revere a little early to tell, but bleak and bloody. Dredd has lost a little if the epic under Ennis, but I don't think there's been a bad one yet. Tao de Moto still needs more pages. This Prog was out on the week of my tenth birthday. I'm constantly wondering at what point, had I tried to, my parents would have let me read this. My guess is - not yet. And for some of these thrills, I wonder if I would have understood them if I had? When is the right age to become a Squaxx dek Thargo?

This Prog was out on the week of my tenth birthday. I'm constantly wondering at what point, had I tried to, my parents would have let me read this. My guess is - not yet. And for some of these thrills, I wonder if I would have understood them if I had? When is the right age to become a Squaxx dek Thargo?

I was wondering something similar myself recently. My son will be eight early next year but there is no way he would want to start reading the modern Prog anytime soon nor do I think I would let him. I started reading Starlord when I was nine and if the Prog was like that now that then I guess nine would be ok. Not that nine year olds these days would be interested ( I Base that purely on what my kids are interested in, so that’s not a particularly wide sample).

So I guess the answer is the ideal starting age has gone up over the years.

My eldest is now fourteen and has been reading the prog, weekly, since he was eleven. Before that he read all the Case Files up to that point and a huge swathe of my trades. The early stories were his favourites, especially Dredd, Flesh, Rogue Trooper and Future Shocks. The only modern stuff he really liked before getting it weekly was Kingdom. SBT

Thanks for the replies. I definitely agree with you Magnetica that the starting age has increased - I think 82/83 stuff would have been perfectly fine at 10 or a bit younger, but this week I was brought up a bit short by the depiction of a battlefield quadruple amputee and talk of panicked involuntary euthanasia in Prog 755's Strontium Dogs, so I feel certain that this would still have been off limits in 1991.

SmallBlueThing, I certainly understand the love for Flesh, Dredd etc - thrills for all ages, and all the ages. I'm curious what prompted him to get the weekly if he only liked one strip, and how long it was before the rest won him over?

He's had a weekly comic bought for him since before he could read. Started off with CBeebies magazine, then Scooby Doo, Spidey and Dr Who Adventures. Eventually grew out of them all, and having been reading my 2000AD trades since he could string a sentence together, he asked me to get him the prog every week. Initially it was mainly for Dredd, but he's really liked Jaegir, Threeeeellers, ABCs and Savage. Like all of us, he has things he doesn't get on with (Brass Sun, Counterfeit Girl, Slaine) but he says it's always worth it because something will be good. I got him to give Brink another go, after he was skipping it in the prog, and he really liked it- as did I when I read it in one go. Obviously, being my son, he would be at least a bit like me, but I think 2000AD is now in his blood. I'm sure he'll drop out at some point, but I'd imagine he will always now come back to it from time to time.

Youngest son, the one who really IS a lot like me in most ways, on the other hand can't be arsed with it. He will read Dredd case files, but has no interest in comics really.